The "Do you say anything topeople who spend foolishly" got me thinking about this post. It's time for an update.
The couple in question hit some financial hard times about 2 months ago. Her disability ended as did the grace period on payments to the credit cards. It turns out that they hadn't been making payments for the last year because they were covered by some form of insurance.
Also back in Feb she had to fly to a conference in texas for her side business. I'm not sure she makes enough from the business to even cover the cost of the flight but whatever. They planned a family trip as the husbands father lived near the conference area, so he'd pay for the entire families flight down and they could stay with him. Great, until the husband forgot to ask for time off work and couldn't go during the conference. Instead the wife went to the conference and then flew home, 3 days later they all jumped on a plane to see grandpa for a week.
This is when reality finally caught up with them. They got home, Husband had missed a weeks work, mom had blown a couple of thousand at a conference, all of the bills were sitting there and the credit cards were maxed out. They had to borrow $20 from her mom to buy the kids milk.
Sad to say but I thought this was a great thing. Nothing like your kids going hungry to get your priorities straight right? It also let me know I'm not crazy, you can't spend way above your means forever and not have it come back to haunt you. So off to a financial advisor they went. Financial advisor looked it all over and said they could consolidate debts and they would do it for only something like $2500. This would lower payments and take some pressure off.
I offered to help make some suggestions on lowering some of their bills ($400/month electicity bill when my average is closer to $70 for similar sized houses...), who knows how much on TV, netflix,vpn,...
jump ahead a week and the wife gets a new job. It's not great but pays something and works schedule wise for her. Excellent so things are now moving in the right direction.... Two nights later I take my family out to dinner which is a rare event but I had just gotten a raise and wanted something special. Get to the restaurant and there is the couple, and kids, and a table full of appetizers waiting for the main meal.
Now here we are a couple of weeks later and they're trying to convince me to go somewhere nice with them because my wife and I never get away and we deserve it....